N Scale sound in locos sound terrible to me

[wm3798]

Well I guess I've been out of the decoder game too long.  Had no idea the chip was so compact.

Gradually, gradually, I may have to re-evaluate my position...

Lee

[mmagliaro]

I have had a few sound-equipped engines at my house for repair (not to the DCC or sound stuff).  And admittedly, I'm testing them on a DC layout, so they just run on their defaults.  i.e. a steam loco goes through its start-up sequence, takes off and chuffs along, clangs the bell, etc.

For me, it's not even a matter of whether the sound is good or bad.   It's a novelty that starts to fatigue me rather quickly.  It may just be a personality thing, or the fact that I like quiet.  But after a few minutes, I just have to shut the darn sound off because it's making me crazy, and again, this has nothing to do with how good or bad the sound quality is.

I had an Athearn Challenger here once, with the magnet-wand controllable volume.  A few laps around the layout and I had to turn it down.    A few minutes more and I just had to turn it off.   Quieter was better, but off was best.

Sound just ain't for me.

[Dave V]

Funny, to me, steam without sound is dead now that I'm used to it.  Turning on the headlight and hearing that dynamo whir to life...yeah, that's railroadin'.

What's starting to bug me is that with all of the wonderful chuffs and hisses, no steam or smoke emanates from my engines.  But, 1) I know smoke oil makes track cleaning a real bear and 2) after a while the smell can be overwhelming.

I'm in Colorado, though...  I could have fun with "special" local oil in a smoke unit!   

[thomasjmdavis]

For me, the biggest issue is that sound is very difficult to "scale".  Much of it is that while we can scale down the measurements of everything by 1/160, we cannot change our perception of time the same way.  Most better sound equipped locos I have encountered sound pretty good if I am close up to them.  But when viewed from 3' away, the sound is "wrong".  The reason is that 3' distance is 480 scale feet.  The locomotive sounds like a locomotive that is 3' away, not a locomotive that is 480 feet away.  @unittrain alludes to this in his comment earlier when he talks about how much different the train sounds at a distance. And, at a distance of a mile, there is a delay of several seconds between when you see (for example) the train pass a "whistle" signal and hearing the whistle- speed of sound is just not THAT fast.  The problem here is that we spend a whole lot of time and effort to create scenes that appear real- so you look down the mainline to the other end of the room, everything is proportioned as it would be in real life. but the lack of realistic delay breaks the illusion.

I've managed auditoriums and run audio for concerts and spent hours upon hours positioning speakers and tweaking EQ, reverb and delay to attempt to optimize sound in a space.  In a typical train room, this is going to be very difficult, especially when you have several sound sources, and the one that is 32 feet away should sound like it is a mile distant, and the one 3 feet away should sound 500 feet distant.

And I doubt we will ever have the realistic "rumble" of a train going by- because to achieve it would require a subwoofer with enough oomph to shake the floor- of course, you could do that, but it would bounce the layout enough to derail an N scale train.

As with all scale modeling, sound is a compromise.  What I think I am waiting for is controllable equalization (EQ) which would give me enough control to make it sound right to me most of the time, along with perhaps some sort of doppler function (I have seen attempts at this, but not sure about anything that would fit inside an n scale loco).  No doubt the technology is out there, and I probably should not worry about it, as it will be hard enough to convert everything I have to DCC just for operational control, much less sound, much less some sort of high tech, doesn't exist yet, advanced DCC sound control.

[MVW]

Please pardon this interruption:

I'd just like to proclaim this thread -- or at least, the nature of the posts in it -- is freakin' awesome.

I saw the title, noticed the OP was a relatively new member, and for some reason assumed this would quickly degenerate into pro-sound, anti-sound scrum, with plenty of dispersions and hurt feelings to go around. Guess I've been spending way too much time on sports forums lately. 

Anyway, just wanted to say thanks, TRW denizens, for a reasoned, well-articulated discussion. Hell, a few posts even bordered on literature.

Good on ya, guys.

Carry on.

Jim

[tehachapifan]

Like I said, this is a hotly-debated subject.

As others have mentioned, my sound-equipped locos sound pretty much how I would expect real ones to sound if I was standing a few hundred feet away, where there's isn't the chest-thumping bass or much doppler effect, if any. Plus, there's (what I consider) acceptable scale-down of the sound. What I mean is, if I were able to scale myself down to 1:160 and stand a inch away from the track, I would guess the sound would be pretty ominous. Would there be a doppler effect then too? I suppose not.

All this said, I certainly wouldn't turn my nose up at a little more bass (only a little more) but I'm still VERY happy. What I think may be continuing to happen is that people are hearing examples of installs that are not living up to their full potential. I firmly believe this has most to do with the sound enclosure or even a complete lack thereof, often resulting in a tinny-sounding mess.

[Nato]

             If sound could be scaled to a realistic level, then a deaf old codger like myself would never hear it, The Broadway Limited "Rolling Thunder" sound where it sounds like the entire one to one scale Super Chief is passing through the room is just overkill. I have noticed that the public at train shows loves sound equipped locomotives and you get adults commenting to kids all the time "listen can you hear the whistle, or "hear the chugging". I love blowing the whistle for crossings on a layout, or giving a departure toot or honk, ringing the bell for safety when moving in a rail yard,  but is it worth the extra bucks? Only if the only way you could get a model of your favorite Podunk Southern locomotive was with sound. Ya I have mixed feelings about sound, yet I own quite a few soundies as I call them . Maybe it is my memories as a kid of the buzz buzz buzz of a Lionel F3 horn powered by D batteries that always leaked or that semi realistic sound of the fan driven air whistle in the tender of a Lionel 2-6-4 or better yet reading the American Flyer catalogs where they described realistic diesel roar and synconized (spell check word) smoke and "Choo Choo" for their steamers. Don't even get me started about the huge a rific clouds of smoke from O steamers on layouts at train shows. Nate Goodman (Nato).   

[jdcolombo]

Sound-equipped locos ARE a big hit at Ntrak shows, although with the ambient noise level, you can't really hear a diesel prime mover at all - just the horn and bell, and you'd better turn those up to max.  On the other hand, it IS pretty easy to hear chuffs and the whistle from a steam loco, and sound-equipped steamers seem to cause everyone to go ga-ga.  That's how I justify owning things like an FEF, the SP Daylight; both a Big Boy and a Challenger, and a couple of Bachmann EM-1's.  "I'll run 'em at shows and people will love it" is my excuse    -  and they do.  If it hadn't been for the fact that one of our club members is a Pennsy guy, and has M1's, T1's and K4's, I'd probably have those, too . . . But I do think that the steam loco manufacturers generally have poor sound installations.  They don't use sealed enclosures around the speaker(s) (no, the tender shell isn't a proper enclosure); don't use good speakers; etc.  I was VERY disappointed in the Pennsy T-1's sound until I did a speaker transplant in my friend's two units.  Someone who heard the T1 in its factory form would be justified in saying N scale sound sucks.

John C.

[C855B]

... I was VERY disappointed in the Pennsy T-1's sound until I did a speaker transplant in my friend's two units.  Someone who heard the T1 in its factory form would be justified in saying N scale sound sucks.

That was my impression, too, when programming a friend's T-1. What especially hit me as most unsatisfying was the speaker location, "Hey, the locomotive is UP HERE, you yayhoos!", so why is the sound coming from the far rear of the long tender? 

[peteski]

It's like this, Pete.  I don't have a current functioning layout, I have a substantial collection of otherwise fully functional equipment, I don't have the budget to spend upwards of $200 on something that will see the light of day maybe once or twice a year when I wander into someone else's basement for an hour or two.  And according to the reports of others in this thread, it's not worth it to run a less expensive decoder/speaker set up if sound is your bag.

For me, in my current situation anyway, I can't justify the expense of time, effort, or money to add something that makes it harder to hear the music I like to play while I'm tinkering in the train room...that I don't have!

I don't begrudge others from wanting to take on sound, and if I chunked everything I had and switched to a larger scale, I could see it becoming a thing.  But I still don't see myself diving in with both feet in N scale at this point.
Lee

Hey, I'm in a same boat: I don't have a home layout (or even NTRAK or TTRAK) module, but over the last 30-odd years I have accumulated quite a collection of N scale locos and rolling stock.  Luckily, I have few friends with N scale layouts (which I help to build), and I belong to a local NTRAK club, where I can run my trains.

What struck me about your earlier post was how quickly you blamed the sound equipment for destroying the appearance of models.  If you don't like sound - that's fine. Just don't blame sound for making out models look inferior, or use that as an excuse for not favoring sound.  Technology is progressing very fast - very good sound decoders are now small enough to easily fit in even small N scale switchers.  Even speaker design has really advanced in the last several years.

[peteski]

And I doubt we will ever have the realistic "rumble" of a train going by- because to achieve it would require a subwoofer with enough oomph to shake the floor- of course, you could do that, but it would bounce the layout enough to derail an N scale train.

Well, with the current BLI system you can have that rumble from a subwoofer under the layout. But to me that is just wrong.  That sort of sound supposedly coming from a 5" model just plain wrong.  I like sound which is just right for a small model (the scale sound).

[Chris333]

I tried DDC in On30 just so I could have sound and I couldn't stand all the programming. And in the end the sound didn't sound like a real locomotive to me. It sounded like a robot.

I see videos of sound installed that I like, but all the work to get there is just crazy.


Then a month later the decoder blows...   

[peteski]

Then a month later the decoder blows...   

You have a very good point.   

[DKS]

I like sound which is just right for a small model (the scale sound).

Which, from my perspective, is nearly silent... 

For me, the biggest issue is that sound is very difficult to "scale".

A great many things can't be scaled... water, smoke, gravity, etc., etc... nearly everything except dimensions. So, my preference is to "hear" the sound in my head, which is way better than the insect buzzing that half-inch speakers are only capable of reproducing. Just the way we imagine static water (which can look great in still photographs) is moving, and cars, and people, and everything else. Sorry, but the laws of physics prevent me from enjoying model sound. I'm not going to disparage those who do enjoy the noise, but don't expect others to do the same just because it's popular, and please don't disparage us because we reject it.

I see videos of sound installed that I like, but all the work to get there is just crazy.

Then a month later the decoder blows...   

QFT

[CRL]

Some very interesting responses from both sides of the issue. I didn’t anticipate so many responses so quickly. As stated initially, my position is towards not liking sound in n-scale locos, but I’m even annoyed by the sound of metal wheelsets... sounds too much like the tinplate guys running their toy trains at breakneck speed at the train show.

However, ambient sound effects may be very effective on a layout based sound system with much more capable speakers. My first experience with this was over 30 years ago at the East Texas Oil Museum in Kilgore. Stunningly effective, but not loud at all so remained in the background. Even as good as the initial impact was, it wore out quickly because it was a recorded sound loop and lacked any realistic randomness.

The comments about scale sound were interesting, and is probably one of the issues bothering me. I remember watching the UP Challenger do a 50mph run by from about 50 yards away and was surprised at how quiet that huge loco was at speed. Granted, it wasn’t pulling a heavy freight up a grade, but the sound wouldn’t carry far. However, I can hear the low frequency rumble of the diesel locos on a quiet city night from over 3 miles away with the (cheap-assed) windows closed. Since any speaker that will fit in an n-scale loco will only produce high frequency sound, regardless of the enclosure, the mid and low frequency sounds are missing. The only thing an enclosure does is prevent the sound waves from wrapping around to the back of the speaker driver and cancel the sound. A sealed speaker enclosure acts as an infinite baffle preventing the back wave from the speaker from canceling the front wave, but it can’t “create” sound the speaker is incapable of producing.

Overall, I’d rather have no sound than annoying (to my ears) sound since it would be detrimental to my enjoyment of the visual effect.

With respect for those who feel otherwise, I promise to not scream “that sound sucks” as your sound equipped loco goes by. I reserve the right to mutter it under my breath.